


Her Gift From God

by snarry_splitpea



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Non-Consensual Spanking, One-Sided Attraction, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 02:29:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10480050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarry_splitpea/pseuds/snarry_splitpea
Summary: Mary Lou can't believe a man like this has taken an interest in her. She can believe that he, like any man, is a cruel partner.





	

He’d shown up on the doorstep of Barebone House in a lightning storm. Dark hair pasted to his forehead and rainwater drizzling over his sharp features as bad omens broke the sky in terrifying flashes. She should have known better than to let him in.

The man wore all black. Throat and wrists covered like a priest.  He tracked in the grime of New York streets.  Clutched in both hands, a crumpled black, felt hat. Even soaked through, the man cut an imposing figure in Mary Lou’s doorway.

He’d introduced himself as Ivan.  She knew “Gift from God” is what it meant.  Mary Lou had saved the name for an adoptee worthy of it.  She hadn’t met one, yet.

But a gift is exactly what Ivan had been, for a time. Even when he disappeared for days at a time, he left Mary Lou with the reassurance that work for The Lord was what drew him away.  She felt no need to question him.  He was a man and what would she need to know about the business he tended?

She was grateful for the opportunity to fix her eyes on his heavy brows at dinner, most nights, while pretending she wasn’t imagining what he looked like beneath the high collar of his black suit.  She was grateful to hear the splash of his body in the basin down the hall as she put the kids to bed. It had been so long since she’d been in any sort of masculine care.

He was kind to the kids. Talked to them frequently with his body squatting to meet them on their level. His head tilted towards them and words whispered in conspiratorial ways as if he respected the little cretins like equals.  They loved him for it.  Worked harder and more diligently when he was around.

He spent time reading with them. Playing with them in the street. They ran to him for comfort when she’d needed to remind them of their place. It irked her to think that his gentle hand was spoiling the discipline she’d worked so hard to teach them.

As Ivan’s visits become more frequent and his attention more pointed, Mary Lou wondered if he’d ever want to be a father. Her husband. She wondered if the way he rolled up his sleeves to patch the windows of her chapel and hammer the banister on her stairs meant he wanted to be a part of this building. An unmovable, permanent fixture like her diligence and piety.  A new husband to make this child-addled widow whole, again.

Though his face was free of lines and his body seemed to pulse with some unnamed vigor, Mary Lou could see swathes of grey spanning out from Ivan’s temples.  Likely premature, but it comforted her to pretend she was younger than him.  Like she could woo him with her feminine wiles instead of preying on his desperation.  
  
Because it was desperation, she reminded herself whenever her heart had the audacity to dream of keeping him.  He’d needed shelter.  Needed a place where he was considered worthy. Ivan, a pious man, had been exiled from his home for his belief in magic. He’d heard her gospel from afar and found himself drawn to Second Salem.  He’d been desperate to find a way to fight against the witches that had revealed themselves to him, long ago.    
  
It was desperation that had lead him to this night, she hoped.  
  
Frustrated, Ivan had grabbed one of the children.  Shaking their shoulders.  Demanding that they reveal what lie in their heart.  Mary Lou, despite her habits, had not taken kindly to seeing someone handle her child in such a way. They were hers to scold. Hers to control.

She’d regretted it as soon as she opened her mouth but couldn’t stop herself from yelling at Ivan. All the pent up frustrations from the months she’d known him. To pretend he cared for no worldly possessions but flaunt the scorpion pin at his throat. To win her children’s hearts away from her.  They’d grown bold.  Questioning her orders intermittently.  She let herself scream and threaten him until she was red in the face.  Her face growing ever more scarlet as she raved against the man’s deliberate abuse of one of her flock.

He’d shocked her into silence by falling to his knees in front of her.  Ivan clutched at her skirts and kissed the hem as if she were a saint poised to forgive him. The righteous fury fizzled to nothing. Replaced by a deep thrill that a man, any man, would bow to her. That she had the power, for once in her life, to stand above someone who wasn’t a child.

The man asked, like a parishioner in confession, what his penance would be.  Asked if she’d strike him like she did the boy. She’d never felt pleasure at striking Credence.  Just a firm hand guided by the Lord’s necessary wrath against what the boy might have become.

Mary Lou shivered.

Her mind filled with the imagined cries of this man who would kneel before her like he worshiped her.  Like she mattered.

Stern. Ignoring the first hints of arousal despite how they cascaded between her thighs in disarming waves, Mary Lou asked for Ivan’s belt.  Watched as he drew his hips up from where he rested on his heels and pushed his jacket aside to draw the leather strip from around his waist.

The strap hissed as it slid from the loops of Ivan’s slacks.

“I have a simple request, Ms. Mary Lou,” he whispered as he folded the belt against itself and presented it to her.

She nodded to indicate her attention. He smiled up at her.  The expression uncommon and startling in it’s own way.  Ivan was a solemn soul.  His smiles rare and usually only directed at the children.  Did he take pleasure from the idea that she’d harm him?

Because she wanted to.

She wanted to hear him scream out. Wanted to be the reason he did. Wanted to soothe him afterward and grow closer through the bond of shared depravity.

“One,” she stated.  Keeping her face inscrutable as something sadistic seemed to overtake the man’s angular features.  Had his grin grown some menace?

“Call me Mr. Graves when you beg me to stop.”  
  
Mary Lou’s face collapsed into confusion as the man punctuated the remark with a flick of his wrist.  She’d seen such gestures, before.  Never in good company.

Her left hand, which had been reaching out to take the belt, was suddenly pressed to the small of her back as if attached by cords she couldn’t feel. The right one inexplicably glued to the table he'd turned her toward.  She struggled against the way her feet planted to keep her legs spread. Most of her body felt petrified.

She found she was too terrified to scream when the hem of her dress slithered up her body.  Drawn up by an unseen hand.  The same hem Ivan… no… This Graves person had just kissed.

The belt connected with the skin just above the garters that held up Mary Lou’s stockings.  Striking hard and true, the man made no noise. The only noises in the room her stunned sniveling, the swish of leather slicing through the air, and the sound of it cracking as he struck her.

He didn’t exult in his victory over her trapped body.  Didn’t loudly inventory her sins as he’d witnessed her do with the children she punished.

Mr. Graves simply lashed Mary Lou’s bare thighs and silk-sheathed bottom with some unspoken intent. The leather cutting through skin and thin fabric. She could feel the welts rising.  Nearly sobbed at how he seemed to never shy away from already twice-bitten flesh.

But she didn’t sob.  Couldn’t make herself find the grief for it.  Barely felt a thing beyond stun.  She’d known the bite of a loved one’s hand. The immediate feeling of betrayal and subsequent acceptance of her place beneath whatever man occupied her life. She’d, long ago come to expect slaps to her face and broad fingers closing around her throat when she’d wronged someone.  Be it her father or her husband.  God rest both their souls.  
  
The burn made her lose focus.  Ripped through her senses repeatedly until the numb mood spilled over into a numb body.  She knew the pain existed.  That it was searing and unflinching.  Yet, somehow the pain felt distant.  Mary Lou wondered if the disconnection she felt from her body was death.

He had shown up on her doorstep like an angel of death.  A witch.  How had she let her longing for a companion cloud her judgment?  
  
Mary Lou returned to her senses some time later. Her body curled on her own bed.    The skin on her back fresh and unblemished but somehow she couldn’t pretend it had been a dream.  


Her life had, again, been touched by magic.  Ruined and disrupted by this force that had never shown her anything but a terrifying abuse of power without apparent purpose. The irony was lost on her.


End file.
